Live performance of Bill Frost's Flying Machine. Bill Frost's Flying Machine was inspired by a local legend in Saundersfoot, Pembrokeshire where I spent a lot of my childhood. There's a story which claims that a Saundersfoot local called Bill Frost managed to design and build the first powered flying machine, and that he flew it briefly in the decade before the Wright Brothers. He crashed the machine and before he could recover it there was a gale which scattered the various bits of the machine, Frost was unable to repair or recreate it. The story has long been considered something of a tall tale, but recent research has in fact uncovered a patent for a flying machine filed by Bill Frost, so who knows!? The song is told from the point of view of the machine, and it's disappointment not to achieve the worldwide fame that was "only a flight away."